As Zoom’s main liaison with Chinese authorities, Jin received directives from several bodies within China’s censorship and security apparatus, including the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the regime’s internet regulator; the Ministry of State Security (MSS), China’s top intelligence agency; and Ministry of Public Security (MPS), the regime’s law enforcement body, according to the court complaint.
Jin was responsible for proactively monitoring meetings on Zoom for discussions deemed “illegal” by the regime. For instance, in August 2019, Jin singled out a Christian group hosting meetings on Zoom’s U.S. servers, an FBI agent said in the complaint. Jin told a U.S.-based colleague that the group was a “Chinese cult” and its account should be blocked due to its discussion of Christian content. In response, the colleague directed Jin to put the account on “quarantine” status, an action that limits its features, in the hopes that this would force the user to drop the platform.
In early September 2019, the Chinese regime blocked Zoom from operating in the country. To resume operations, Zoom was required to submit “rectification” plans to Chinese authorities, the complaint said. In the plan, Zoom agreed to proactively monitor communications for discussion of topics, including political views, deemed unacceptable to the CCP, migrate the storage of around 1 million China-based users’ data to China from the United States, and provide Chinese security authorities special access to Zoom’s systems, according to the FBI agent.
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